Staying for the Women Who Will Follow
One of the most memorable moments for me from Grace Hopper was Sheryl Sandberg’s plea to the attendees:
“I can’t tell you enough how much I hope you stay in the tech fields, and on the tech side of the tech fields…Stay for yourselves because they’re better careers, and stay in for the women who follow you.”
Now the sentiment certainly resonated with me. Spending the week at a convention center filled with 12,000 attendees (97% of whom were women), knowing I’d soon be returning to an office where it’s memorable to run into another woman in the bathroom —I’d had similar thoughts. I remember remarking to a friend, “Imagine if we all agreed to apply to one company together, we could radically change the gender imbalance, we could take over.” It was a nice daydream on the plane ride home.
But returning to Sandberg’s quote, what does it say about our industry that the woman who literally wrote the book on leaning into high-powered jobs and the tech industry* has reduced her message to pleas like this one? Perhaps she, like me, has heard the sobering statistics: even those who survive the pipeline and make it into industry are unlikely to stay.
Forty-one percent of women leave technology companies after 10 years of experience, and fifty-six percent have left 20 years in.
Faced with such terrible odds, I’m certainly not surprised that she used her plenary session to beg us all to stay. I’ve seen this play out in my own career. When I’ve contemplated leaving teams, managers have emphasized how devastated my female coworkers would be, instead of focusing on the larger issue that one person leaving could dramatically affect the percentage of women. I’ve been on the other side, feeling mildly betrayed when women I respected and looked up to left the company — nevermind that when the men left, I accepted that better offers existed.
So, when I contemplate my career goals and wonder if I’d enjoy roles like product management, recruiting, or diversity programs — a sinking feeling sets in. Maybe I would be happier, but I’d also be letting everyone down. Even just typing this feels like a betrayal. Now everyone will know my best kept secret: sometimes I think I’d be happier in recruiting.
People often ask when I knew I wanted to be a computer scientist, and truthfully no defining moment comes to mind. I was lucky enough to take CS classes in high school, and though they woefully underprepared me for the rigor of college classes and often included outright exclusionary classmates, I stayed. After overcoming what I then believed to be the greatest hassle (being the only girl in a 30 person class) — it seemed like something I’d committed to. There were college prospects and job prospects to think of — and after joining Women in CS in college and seeing just the tip of the iceberg that is women in technology — staying seemed like the right thing to do.
What about now? As a passionate advocate for women in tech, what do I do? What should anyone do? A woman should be able to pursue any career path (including full-time motherhood) as long as she has the agency to choose. Now agency is difficult to calculate when you consider childhood socialization among other things, but by that definition there’s nothing wrong with a woman “dropping out” of tech to pursue the non-tech side of the company, in fact it should be celebrated. Yet it doesn’t feel that simple, especially with the nationwide focus on getting women into STEM careers.
Arguably taking on certain roles improves your impact — Sheryl Sandberg certainly has a larger scope of influence than most software engineers — and certainly staying in a roles where you’re unhappy is not good for anyone. But where is the balance? Without one woman staying on a team she disliked, another may have missed an incredible mentor or may not have thrived in that role. The lives of women in tech are far too intertwined.
There’s certainly no universal decision for everyone. For now, I’m happy with my role and enjoy the ability to contribute to recruiting, diversity, product management and other roles on an adhoc basis. Who knows how I’ll feel in a few years? By then, I hope to have contributed to making my team, company, and the tech industry just a tiny bit better so that my departure could be missed for my coding contributions, and not just for my gender.
Stay? Go? Choose your own adventure? Follow your passion and thank the women who helped you get there.
* Note: Though Lean In is typically seen as the only book on the subject, there are others out there, check out Lean Out or feel free to recommend others in the comments.
